


the sound of the life of the mind

by baliset



Category: DCU, Heroes in Crisis (DCU Comics)
Genre: Better Than Canon, F/F, Heroes in Crisis (DCU) Fix-It, M/M, Memory Alteration, Mystery, Secret Identity, Slow Burn, also we are Going To Get Into the continuity issues surrounding rebirth ted kord, and by god is he going to go to therapy, because nobody at dc sure wants to explain em, i intentionally wrote this without rereading HiC, the first tweet i wrote when i found out about HiC was 'send booster gold to therapy', there is a good bit of worldbuilding that is different including how sanctuary works
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25352746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baliset/pseuds/baliset
Summary: Booster Gold is remembering things he shouldn't be - deaths that never happened, places that don't exist, missions he was never on. He checks into Sanctuary in search of answers.
Relationships: Michael Carter/Ted Kord, Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	the sound of the life of the mind

**Author's Note:**

> so, this is uhhhhhhh. a heroes in crisis rewrite/au fic that i have been ruminating on for a bit. i changed pretty much everything about how sanctuary works, and why booster is there (because i'm electing to ignore the batman arc he was in, sorry tom). there will still be a murder mystery, but a different murder mystery. there will be a lot of ruminating on superheroes' mental health, and on continuity trying to repair itself. buckle up i guess.
> 
> title is from the ben folds five song of the same name.

“State your name, please.”

“Booster Gold.”

“Your civilian name.” 

The voice coming from the overhead intercom was tinny and nasal, almost passably human. Booster had been face-to-faceplate with enough robotic janitors and security guards to know that it was fully automated. The inflection was the tip-off, the voice enunciating just a bit too much, every syllable crisp but jerky. It reminded him of the way Skeets spoke.

Poor Skeets. Booster wished he’d brought the little guy, but Sanctuary was supposed to be anonymous. No point in putting on a mask if people could identify you by the robot who followed you everywhere.

“Your civilian name, please,” the voice on the intercom said, again.

“This is being taped, right?” Booster asked, squinting into the glossy black eye of the camera set into the wall opposite him. The room was claustrophobic, not much to it but four walls, a chair, and a table, and it reminded Booster of the interrogation rooms on the Watchtower. Not a surprise. Batman had probably designed both.

Wait. What was the Watchtower, again? Booster blinked, trying to draw up the memory - bustling up and down the halls with other heroes in bright costumes, catching glimpses of Batman or Superman’s cape disappearing around the corner, on the way to a meeting room that someone like Booster Gold would never see the inside of. Looking out a window that dwarfed him, seeing his own reflection superimposed against the black void of space. Booster remembered how the Watchtower cafeteria had  _ smelled _ , the grease of fried food mingling with water-logged vegetables from the salad bar. The place had reminded him of home, his  _ first _ home, in the 25th century.

But there was no Justice League Watchtower in space. Just the Hall of Justice, on Earth, where it had always been.

A spot on his temple, just above his right eye, throbbed with the threat of an encroaching migraine. Booster moved instinctively to push his goggles up and off of his eyes, onto his forehead, but he wasn’t wearing his goggles. He’d forgotten he was in civvies. He rubbed at his temples with the fingers of both hands instead, closing his eyes for a moment.

“Hey,” he said, once he opened them again. “I asked -”

“You are correct,” the voice on the intercom said, with an amount of hesitance that even Booster heard. “Sanctuary keeps a digital record of all entrance and exit interviews, to mark the progress of our patients. Records are periodically erased, but may be sent to patients for private use.”

“You ask every cape who comes in here for their civilian name, and keep a  _ digital record _ of it? Isn’t that begging for trouble? Like, weren’t there a bunch of evil Batmen from another dimension running around a little while ago? What if they got their hands on this stuff? Or what if, stick with me here, somebody decided to just put it on a flash drive and pop it on over to the Daily Planet?” Booster tipped his chair back onto two legs, propping his feet up on the table and arching an eyebrow at the camera. “What’s the contingency plan, here?”

“Your civilian name, please,” the voice said. Apparently it wasn’t programmed to think too hard about the ethics of what it did. Booster wondered if there was a real person plugged into the video feed somewhere, monitoring it. Maybe Batman. Or someone Batman had appointed to do that kind of thing. Batman seemed like the kind of guy who would burst into flames upon setting foot in a therapy facility, even if he’d designed the place himself.

“Fine,” Booster said, lacing his fingers together behind his head. He could put the bot through scripted paces as much as he liked, he supposed, but only one conversational track was going to get him into Sanctuary. “Michael Jon Carter.”

Silence flooded the room. Booster imagined his name was being referenced and cross-referenced in different databases. Hell, maybe they were running a whole background check. Fine by him. Even if he wasn’t from the 21st century, he made the news often enough that he wasn’t a hard guy to find. Not to mention the corporate sponsorships. 

_ What sponsorships? _ That spot over his eye throbbed again, and he rubbed at it, like he could massage it away.

“Are you checking yourself into Sanctuary of your own volition, Mr. Carter?” the voice on the intercom asked, suddenly. Booster jumped in his chair, just barely catching himself before the whole thing tipped over backwards.

“I - yeah. Yeah,” he said. 

He didn’t  _ like _ that he was checking himself in, but that didn’t mean it was the wrong thing to do. He’d been dealing with the headaches and the false memories for over a year now, and it had been getting worse. He remembered whole friendships that had never happened with people who barely knew him. He would see the face of another hero and be struck by the sense that they knew each other better than they should have, or sometimes with the idea that they were supposed to be dead, that they’d died years ago in a horrible tragedy. He’d remember a funeral, or a memorial service. But that hero would still be walking and talking right in front of him, no matter how differently Booster remembered it.

He had been wondering if it was some kind of sickness the time travel had given him, or just his brain playing tricks on him, showing him things that weren’t there. Maybe Sanctuary wouldn’t have the answers - Booster doubted it would - but it would be somewhere he could  _ talk _ about it. Having memories that didn’t line up wouldn’t hold a candle to some of the shit other heroes had gone through. Booster had never been tortured by Apokolips’s minions on a different planet, or bludgeoned to death with a crowbar, and he’d certainly never been to the Biblical Hell. At least, as far as he remembered.

The anonymity was a perk, too. Booster didn’t completely  _ get _ it, but Skeets had told him that there was a certain stigma against therapy in the 21st century that society hadn’t gotten past yet. Making it public that he was seeking therapy might damage the brand that was Booster Gold, might make people see him as something less than well-adjusted - which was stupid, because plenty of well-adjusted people went to therapy all the time. But Skeets had run the numbers and predicted not only a drop in popularity, but a decrease in invitations to events and media appearances. Booster might not have minded that so much, but he didn’t exactly have a day job. His livelihood rested on the kind of attention he got from the media.

“Mr. Carter?” the voice on the intercom asked, and Booster realized he had vaguely registered it asking him something else, but had failed to answer.

“Yeah,” he said, flashing the camera a winning smile. He didn’t even have to try to do it. It was just muscle memory at this point. “Can you run that by me again?”

“Would you care to describe the nature of the problem you are seeking help for?”

“Nope,” Booster said cheerfully, because like hell he’d let anyone, even Batman, catch him on tape admitting the problems he’d been having. Group therapy was one thing, but a taped interview that could leak to any dedicated hacker was something else. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather talk to a therapist, not the robot designed to grill me before I even get in the door. Even if the therapist is also a robot.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that answer,” the voice said, sounding a little tinnier than before, and maybe a little meeker. Booster wondered if he’d offended it. Or if it was even capable of feeling offended at all.

“I’m opting out of answering,” he said, over-enunciating in almost the same way as the voice did. He hopped to his feet and began to pace the tiny room, feeling boxed in by the sleek, white panels that seemed to cover every surface. Booster had never minded small spaces, but there was something about  _ this _ space that felt stifling, like if he sat there long enough the walls would start closing in. He wondered if this was secretly a part of the therapy, and hoped it wasn’t.

“Your comments have been noted,” the voice said. “How long do you anticipate your stay in Sanctuary will be, Mr. Carter?”

“I don’t know,” Booster said, honestly. He hadn’t thought about it. He liked to live in the moment as much as he could, and let Skeets worry about his schedule. “Uh, a week, I guess. Maybe two weeks. I’m not gonna get kicked out, right?”

“As long as you adhere to the rules of Sanctuary, you are welcome to stay,” the voice said. It sounded a little more confident now, like it was reading from a script. “You are free to check out of Sanctuary any time you like -”

“But I can never leave, right?” Booster interrupted, the grin stealing its way back onto his face. Like Hell was he about to let that joke slip by.

“- and you are free to return at your convenience,” the voice went on. Booster wondered if the note of distaste he heard in its voice was real or imagined. “Your identity will be protected for the duration of your stay, and you are to remain masked in all public spaces, though you may reveal any details you wish about yourself to any other patients, at your discretion alone. Any Sanctuary patient who reveals the identity of another without their consent is subject to removal from Sanctuary, and a disciplinary meeting with the Justice League.”

Booster nodded. He was pretty sure he’d had one of those before, but he tried not to think too hard about it.

“Attacking any other patient is grounds for removal from Sanctuary, and a temporary or permanent ban from the premises, depending on the severity of the attack. All public areas of Sanctuary are monitored internally, to allow our staff to prevent physical altercations between patients should they occur. Once your stay is over, publicly revealing details about other Sanctuary patients without their consent will also result in a permanent ban from the premises.”

The intercom fell silent, apparently having run through the entire script of the welcome speech. Booster leaned against the table, waiting for something to happen, but the room remained still and quiet. He braced himself to hear the voice again, unwilling to let it startle him a second time, but he soon heard a different sound instead. A pneumatic hissing noise was coming from the wall with the camera in it.

Booster turned his attention to the wall, where a rectangular panel opened and slid outwards, like a drawer being pulled out from a dresser. It  _ was _ a drawer, actually - he could see some sort of fabric bundle inside, and as he approached it, he realized it was a uniform. A white t-shirt, white sweatpants, and a smooth, featureless gold mask with blank eye holes carved into its top half.

Taking the mask in both hands, Booster held it up inches from his face and peered through the eyeholes. He’d never hidden behind anonymity like this before - but no, suddenly he was thinking of another mask, a different costume, a faceless blue hood that had covered up every feature by necessity. 

What had the necessity been? He couldn’t remember. He tried not to.

He pressed the mask over his face, sealing the edges to his skin. It was a good fit. Some sort of adhesive held it in place, and it wasn’t hard to get the eye holes exactly where they needed to be. The mask was also easier to breathe in than Booster had assumed, and he left it on while he changed into the rest of Sanctuary’s uniform, leaving his civvies in a pile on the floor. Hopefully he’d get them back when he checked out.

“I’m done,” he announced to the room once he was fully changed, hoping that whoever - or whatever - monitored the camera had been giving him his privacy. 

In response, the walls hissed at him again, and a door-sized panel in the wall recessed and slid open. 

On the other side of the door was a white hallway so brightly-lit it almost gleamed, the polar opposite of the cluttered Nebraskan rancher that Booster had been ushered through when he’d first arrived. It was sterile, and nearly soundless, though Booster thought he heard the noise of voices and footsteps far in the distance.

There was a woman standing in the hallway, just outside the door. She was waif-thin and pale, with brown hair pulled back into a bun at the back of her head, and she wore a conservative, white cardigan over a dress with a pattern of what looked like sunflowers. She was not wearing a mask.

“Welcome to Sanctuary,” she said, her mouth twitching into a taut smile. It took Booster a moment to place the voice as the same one he’d been hearing over the intercom.


End file.
